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A Beacon of Hope, Justice, and Resolve

Message from the President

Neither you nor I will forget the morning of September
11 and where we were when we heard the news. Business had carried
me from Colonial Williamsburg to Manhattan for a meeting. I was
on the fifty-sixth floor of a Rockefeller Center skyscraper when
the first jetliner crashed three and a half miles away. Then the
second. From the windows, we had an unobstructed view of a fireball.
A tower collapsed. Our building was evacuated when the Pentagon
was attacked, and we went home to follow events on television.

Between Rockefeller Plaza and Colonial Williamsburg and the World Trade
Center there are connections and continuities. John D. Rockefeller Jr.
launched Rockefeller Center in 1928, just as he began in earnest Williamsburgs
restoration. You probably know of the telegram he sent to authorize
his first purchase of a Williamsburg house, the cryptic wire signed
Davids Father to preserve anonymity. In the seventy-five
years since, David has taken a place beside his father in the ranks
of great philanthropists and businessmen. Among the distinctions on
the list of his achievements is the conceptualization of the World Trade
Center as part of the revitalization of lower Manhattan. I could not
help reflecting on these relationships as I made my way through Rockefeller
Plaza among crowds of stunned New Yorkers.

On Madison Avenue, thirty people stood around a white van listening
to its radio. It must have been like that when the Pearl Harbor bulletins
flashed across America. I was reminded of the death of John Kennedy,
the last time I was certain I would not forget where I was when word
of the unspeakable came.

Nancy and I made our way back to Williamsburg by train. The trip gave
us time to reflect about the calamity, about men who build and men who
destroy, about links between past, present, and future, and about the
power of ideas. We knew, instantly and instinctively, Colonial Williamsburgs
duty in these difficult days: to help our visitors, our neighbors, and
our nation draw fortitude and faith from the lessons of the history
we have in common, from the ideas fostered here, from the lessons still
taught here. Colonial Williamsburg is a beacon of the hope, the justice,
and the resolve on which our democracy relies, a repository of the memory
of Americas first principles.

During the days after our return to Williamsburg, foundation friends
began to write. Two letters from California stood out. One was from
Royce and Kitte Baker. They said, We all have the responsibility
to ensure that young people of today and future generations learn the
meaning of freedom and strength that is demonstrated every day at Williamsburg.
So we want to support the Campaign for Colonial Williamsburg, and a
check for $1,000,000 is enclosed for that purpose. The second
was from educator Sandra Gonnerman, a Teacher Institute graduate. She
said, The time spent learning there last summer and thinking about
the heritage of our country has given me hope and strength. The
generosity of spirit reflected in these letters has moved all of us
here.

The Historic Area stands for a philosophy, for the idea that reason
can rule a nation built on the idea of liberty and the principle of
individual rights. The potential to share the experience of that idea,
that principle, has never been greater. Colonial Williamsburg has never
been more alive, more vital, or more needed to teach That the
future may learn from the past.